Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Caine of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, as a teacher at Mossbourne, who has one child there and one who has just left, I—slightly emotionally—thank the noble Lord, Lord Sewell of Sanderstead. I cannot thank him and the Hackney Learning Trust enough. I cannot add anything to that except to quote the chair of a multi-academy trust I was talking to a couple of days ago, who said: “Education is one of the few things in this country that really works. Why do they want to dismantle it?” I can leave it at that.

[Baroness Caine of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise as I was not able to speak at Second Reading as I missed the start of the session for family reasons. So I hope noble Lords will bear with me as I make a contribution linked to this group and Amendment 497 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, who is not in his place, but I thank him for highlighting the important issue of artificial intelligence.

I declare an interest as chair of Camden STEAM. One of the initiatives it has helped catalyse and launch this year is Camden Learning’s first-in-the-world trailblazing pilot: the London AI Campus. Developed in collaboration with Google, it aims to inspire, inform and educate students and teachers in AI and digital skills. If any noble Lords are interested in further information or, indeed, a visit to the centre, I ask them to please get in touch with me.

The Department for Education articulates its purpose as

“the department for opportunity … breaking the link between background and success”.

The national curriculum review, which is nearing its conclusion, is vital to that mission for many reasons, including, as one of its terms of reference states, in developing

“a cutting-edge curriculum, equipping children and young people with the essential knowledge and skills which will enable them to adapt and thrive in the world and workplace of the future”.

I hope the contributions in this Committee session will be helpful to Becky Francis, the chair, as she focuses on this area in the second stage of her work. She has rightly talked about the review pragmatically following a path of “evolution, not revolution”, recognising what has been working successfully, such as the advances the previous Government made in reading and maths.

However, while I support that approach, we are also in a revolution in the world of work, brought on by rapid advances in technology, with the attendant need to effectively support growth and productivity, particularly in the key sectors of the industrial strategy and in our regions. As well as the central issue of AI, which, I am sure, the noble Lord would have eloquently spoken about and has focused on, employers and respected research bodies identify creativity as critical to our future too. As raised in this House before, remedial work and investment are needed to address the consequences of previous policy decisions that have led to the Cultural Learning Alliance’s 2025 report card showing arts entries in GCSEs falling by 48% since 2010, with design and technology seeing an above 70% drop. This has led to an arts entitlement gap highlighted by the disparity between attainment in state-funded schools and independent ones.

It is welcome, therefore, that the importance of addressing these issues has been recognised and that the Prime Minister has spoken about the need to put creativity back at the heart of the curriculum. However, to be effective and up to date, that remediation has to do a number of things. One is the existing suite of qualifications in the arts being modernised to take into account the impact of technology, including artificial intelligence, and the attendant resources required to deliver the Prime Minister’s ambition. This includes capital investment, teacher recruitment and training, online learning, supporting talented children’s access to centres of specialist excellence, and so on. Critically, there is the need to address the need for the new: new qualifications and courses to deliver what is necessary for the future of work.

One of our USPs as a country is our talent in combining creativity and digital innovation—createch —which is driving change across a number of industries, creating new businesses, new roles and new jobs. Ukie, the trade body for computer games, on the back of its very successful Digital Schoolhouse project and with the support of the Creative Industries Council, has put forward a case for the development of a digital creativity GCSE as an alternative to the current computer science qualification. The inconsistent digital skills teaching in schools since the introduction of the computing curriculum a decade ago has led to a postcode lottery in digital education. These new approaches would offer young people other pathways to high-reward skills and jobs, and we wait to hear whether it will be supported as part of the review.

There is a lot to think about. At the same time, we need to move forward with launching the national curriculum. I would be interested to hear my noble friend’s views on whether, as the amendment suggests, a process of evolution and review might be needed for the curriculum so that it continues to develop in step with the revolution that is unfolding before us.

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 502D, which stands in my name. I thank my noble friend Lord Farmer for his support. This amendment seeks to make financial education a mandatory part of the primary school curriculum from year 1. Why do we need it? Its aims are simple but important: to ensure that children begin to develop the knowledge and skills needed to understand and manage money from an early age.

In a world of increasing financial complexity, where our children encounter such things as targeted advertising, digital payments and online scams, often before they have even reached secondary school, it is more important than ever that financial literacy should not be left to chance. While financial education is a statutory part of the secondary school curriculum in England, it is not a requirement in primary schools. This creates a gap at precisely the stage when children begin forming lifelong money habits, and it stands in stark contrast to the rest of the United Kingdom, where such education is embedded in the national curriculum at an earlier age than in England.

The Money and Pensions Service has found that these habits develop as early as age seven, yet we wait until secondary school to introduce compulsory learning. Without embedding financial education from year 1, we risk missing the most formative opportunity to equip our children with the tools that they need to manage money with confidence and make good financial decisions throughout their lives.

According to a research report from Santander UK, at the beginning of this year, out of 2,000 pupils aged 18 to 21, only 26% reported receiving any financial education at school. Without a fundamental understanding of money management, our young people are increasingly turning to online sources for financial guidance and information, especially social media—that comes with its own risks—as they step into an age of financial independence. This cannot be right.

RedSTART Educate, a charity for primary school children that delivers financial education through progressive learning, which has now merged with Money Ready, is a long-standing campaigner for financial education to become statutory in the primary curriculum in England. It tells us that levels of financial literacy in the UK are low and falling, and highlights how awareness of debt, saving and investments needs to begin in primary schools. It is hard to believe, yet the data show, that from their programmes in primary schools 90% of children say that they now understand how budgeting can help them achieve goals and 80% of children can explain the difference between lending and giving. This is surely sufficiently compelling for financial literacy to be taught in primary schools; importantly, it will assist in dealing with the significant inequalities that exist across the country.

However, as the Social Market Foundation highlights, for financial education to make a difference, it is important to start young. Socioeconomic inequalities in financial understanding can be seen at the age of 11. According to Young Enterprise, which has called for financial education to be a core subject in primary school, only one in three primary-aged children receives any financial education, and where it is taught the provision is patchy. In other words, it is a postcode lottery.

This amendment is about establishing consistency and equity, and recognising that financial education should not depend on where a child lives or which school they attend. The Centre for Social Justice, a think tank, has called on the Government, as a minimum, to place financial education on the national curriculum for primary schools within PSHE, and the APPG on Financial Education for Young People, of which I am a vice-chair, has recommended that it be embedded in the primary school curriculum.

We also cannot ignore the link between financial literacy and mental well-being. According to the Mental Health Foundation, money worries are the single biggest cause of stress and anxiety in the UK. The earlier we can equip children with the tools to understand and manage money, the better their long-term financial resilience and emotional health will be. I acknowledge that the national curriculum is under considerable pressure, but financial education cannot be seen as an optional extra. It is a vital life skill, essential for preparing our children to live fulfilling and stable lives in an increasingly complex financial world. That is why I believe this amendment would be a valuable addition to the Bill.